2023
“Not long now,” Mama says. “God is sending me signs. Soon I will see my son.”
When she starts talking like this Ani and I look at each other. A servant must never presume to roll her eyes of course but we recognize each other’s internal eye rolls. It is these tiny moments of solidarity in my lonely days that keep me going.
The truth is I don’t even hate Mama for saying “my son” anymore. Look at her sitting there watching the Asian Food Channel: with the aid of a minor trick of the light I can almost convince myself she’s a sweet old biddy who never did anyone any harm. A tiny shrivelled bony thing slumped in its chair. Her hair shines more silver than black under the lamp and her teeth are yellow from all those years of ciggies at the pubs and bars and clubs of Kuala Lumpur and then finally in the johns of the Muhibbah Centre.
All these many years since we left the Centre her life would have been happier if I could have been enough for her. It’s herself she has deprived. What is there to hate in that?
“Is that right, Mama sayang?” I say. “Where are you meeting him?”
Mama sayang. She likes it when I call her that. Once I was much more honest than kind so nowadays I make up for it by being much more kind than honest. The Mama part is true; the sayang is not. Beloved is too simple and pure a word for what I feel. But you see: I am the son of doing-what-you-need-to-do-to-get-by. I may be the son of my father’s ruination but I am also the son of my mother’s fast learning. Only teach us a game and we’ll beat you at it.
“Oh!” she says now. “When I see him again his body will be whole. I won’t have to think of him like that anymore. The eyes all gone soft like overripe fruits. The ears eaten away like lace. The fingers and toes all bloated …”
In the background Ani pauses in her bustling to shudder and raise her eyebrows.
“Oh, Mama,” I say. “For heaven’s sake.”
It’s no use telling her it’s all nonsense you see. I’ve tried that. I’ve looked her square in the eye and said: “Your son did not drown.” But it’s as though she needs that nightmare. Feeds on it somehow. I can only try to minimize the least savoury elements of these pleasures.
“It was not like that, Mama. You’re getting carried away again.”
“I’m preparing myself for the next stage, Yusuf. I’m not frightened, you know? All these years I’ve been waiting and now finally, finally, I’ll get to hold him and tell him everything I want to tell him.”
These days Mama sometimes favours one of those knitted bonnets normally worn under a tudung. It’s a costume: wearing it she slips into the character of someone very subtly different from the normal Mama sayang. She speaks with a more kampung accent. Her voice is higher and more quivery. On those days it is impossible to believe that the nenek in the chair is the woman at whose feet half of Kuala Lumpur once swooned, with her thickly lined cat eyes and her pointy cone-bra under her glove-fitting lace kebaya. That other woman is as dead as her glamorous namesake Saloma; I look at this bonneted biddy with her loose screws and her rambling tongue and feel only pity like a toothache.
Twenty years ago I might have wondered, What? What are the things she wants to tell Reza that she cannot tell me? But it’s no use pining for what cannot be yours.
“Aaaaah,” I say. “That’s all ancient history now.”
For a moment all I can see in her eyes is confusion. Then the clouds part and the sun blazes in a clear blue sky. She can barely speak through her grin but she forces herself to say:
“It’s a blessing you know. It’s a blessing to be able to say sorry. I’m looking forward to it. To be able to say, ‘I failed you, I didn’t teach you any better, you were just a boy, the sin was all mine’—ah, what a blessing!”
When people begin to spout rubbish like this it’s best to leave them to it. I glide out of the room like a ghost.
But after weeks of telling me with her blissful little smile that she is preparing to see her son soon oh so soon in the happy hereafter suddenly one morning as I’m reading my newspaper she looks at me like a child waking up teary from a nightmare and says, “Can’t you contact your brother, Yusuf?”
No bonnet in sight on that day. She’s had Ani neaten her up. Hair washed dried and coiled into a bun. Freshly ironed baju kurung.
Like generations of the best men before me I take refuge behind my newspaper.
“I don’t have much time left here,” she insists. “My time is coming. My mind is already going. You yourself know. Many days I can’t think clearly anymore. There is only one thing I want. Here or there, before or after, I have to see him.”
Which will it be? I should ask her. In the beforedeath or in the afterlife?
“Can’t you all help me?” she says. Looking around the room as though we might be a crowd of fifty ignoring her needs. “Can’t you find my son and ask him to come?”
Her eyes grow larger and larger until it seems possible they might simply slip out of their sockets.
“But why?” she whimpers. “Was I really so much worse than all the other mothers? At least I tried to give us an interesting life. And if I made mistakes—well I just want to say sorry now. I just want to say sorry. Shouldn’t I have a chance to say sorry?” Pleading now as though I am the judge presiding over her case. Well, if she forces me into the position of judge then she must hear my verdict.
“He doesn’t want your sorry. Even if he’s alive, he doesn’t need it. He’s doing perfectly well without it. All this self-flagellation is a waste of time, Mama.”
She blinks at me in surprise. “A waste of time!” she says. “No, it’s the most useful thing I can do at this stage. Reflect on my past. Seek forgiveness.”
If it’s forgiveness she wants to seek am I not right here at her service? But no. It’s Reza she wants, and over the weeks that follow the badgering grows more frequent. Tell him this tell him that. Just ask him if he’s okay. As long as he’s happy I’m happy. No need to come and see Mama just tell him to send one sentence to say he’s okay.
No fear never not once do I have the slightest intention of going after him. Dead or alive in real life it doesn’t matter: we’re the ones who are dead to him. That time itself, he made it clear that he wanted nothing more to do with us. What more is there to say? If you are dirt on the bottom of a shoe to someone then you must not pine for them. It goes against all cosmic laws of justice.